DMJ – Francesco di Giorgio’s Opusculum de Architectura as Self-Portrait
Francesco di Giorgio’s Opusculum de architectura (London, The British Museum, ms. 197.b.21) is one of the most enigmatic records of the architect’s celebrated career as a designer of machines. Born in the Sienese workshop and completed with an eloquent Latin dedication at the court of Urbino, the manuscript’s 195 unique drawings are both design models and symbolic representations of the architect’s ingenuity and his exalted status as aide-de-camp to Federico da Montefeltro. Reading the Opusculum in the context of the court of Urbino in the mid-1470s, we recognise the architect as intimately connected with the political and cultural ideologies that then circulated. This paper considers the Opusculum as a type of self-portrait through two closely related plot lines: that explicitly elaborated in the manuscript’s dedication with the evocation of Dinocrates (architect to Alexander the Great) and that visually pronounced by Francesco di Giorgio’s two labyrinthine ground plans, allusions to the archetypal architect, Daedalus.
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DMJournal–Architecture and Representation
No. 3: Storytelling
Edited by Mark Dorrian and Paul Carter
ISSN 2753-5010 (Online)
ISBN (tbc)
About the author
Elizabeth Merrill is a scholar of early modern art and architecture, with a research focus on architectural practices and the means by which architects communicated building designs. Much of her research centres on the Sienese architect Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439-1501) and the artistic and technical culture of fifteenth-century Italy. Since 2023, she has been the Principal Investigator of the project Copying as Common Practice in Early Modern European Architecture, which is funded by the European Research Council.
